The task of helping rebuild musical life in Poland now occupied so much of my time that the prospect of serious composition became even more remote. I had now also been asked to assist in the creation of a State Music Publishers1 by the newly appointed director, Tadeusz Ochlewski, with whom I had collaborated during the Occupation over the distribution and performance of my anti-Nazi songs. He wanted me to help him find and train music-copyists to extract orchestral parts. He also remembered our war-time talks about clarity and precision in the way scores should be printed and was particularly interested in my own pre-war innovation with empty space instead of empty stave-lines where instruments were not playing. The first work to be published this way was my reconstructed Tragic Overture. (Some of my Polish colleagues later followed suit, as did Stravinsky and several members of the international avant garde.)

The government's commitment to the regeneration of national culture suited Ochlewski and myself admirably. As non-Party members, we were simply concerned to further the publication of Polish music old and new to the best of our ability. We took to meeting regularly in the stark office allotted to the project by the authorities, a tiny room with just a small table and a few chairs. As a musician in his own right, a violinist, Ochlewski had not been successful, but, though quite caustic and harsh in manner, he worked for others with absolute devotion and intensity, often continuing through the day and into the night without even pause for food. Once I had tracked down and trained suitable craftsmen, he expected them to equal his own self-sacrifice and dedication.

The results were spectacular. Even the sluggish, bureaucratic government chiefs bowed to his will. The offices of his PWM (Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne) expanded rapidly. Musical works were published by the dozen, orchestral parts produced. Gradually, the organisation emerged as perhaps the largest of its kind in the world, with the highest standards. Of course it remained dependent politically and financially on the Ministry of Culture, and all the musical works we selected had then to be approved by a special committee.

Family and Youth

Alphonsus Joannes Maria Diepenbrock was born on 2 September 1862 in Amsterdam, the eldest son of merchant and entrepreneur Ferdinand Diepenbrock (1828–96) and Joanna Kuytenbrouwer (1833–1904). The Diepenbrock roots extended back to a noble German family – and a notably Catholic one – in the Westphalian city of Bocholt. Alphons’ grandfather, Bernhard Diepenbrock (1793–1877), was the steward of the Prince of Salm-Salm in Bocholt, and lived at Horst, near Holtwick, an estate several kilometres distant from the city. One of his grandfather's younger brothers was the Prince-Bishop of Breslau and later Cardinal, Melchior von Diepenbrock (1798–1853). Following studies in Germany and later in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Alphons’ father Ferdinand settled in the Dutch capital as a manufacturing representative. He married Joanna Kuytenbrouwer, who was related to the well-known Catholic families of Alberdingk Thijm and Cuypers, in Amsterdam in 1857.

The considerable wealth of the Diepenbrock family was quickly depleted through embezzlement by one of Ferdinand's business partners. Nevertheless, the Diepenbrock family still lived in relative comfort, especially when compared to the abject poverty suffered by the lower classes living within Amsterdam's ‘canal belt’. Ferdinand and Joanna had nine children, three of whom did not reach their first birthday. Of their surviving children, Lidwine (1859–1933) was the eldest, followed by Alphons (1862–1921), Maria (1864–1931), Willem (1866–1925), Maurits (1869–1943) and Ludgardis (1873–1944). Or as they were known to each other: Lid, Fons, Marie/Mies/Dikmietje (‘Fatty’), Willem, Maus (‘Mouse’) and Lud/Kleinkind (‘Littl’un’) or Luit (‘Lute’).

Joanna's side of the family was of particular importance to the young Alphons, since it was to them that he owed his involvement in the new Catholic upsurgence in Dutch culture. Joanna's grandmother was a relative of the prominent and pivotal Catholic figure Joseph A. Alberdingk Thijm (1820–98), known within the family as the ‘old professor’. Thijm's youngest son, Karel, who later became known as the writer Lodewijk van Deyssel (1864–1952), was therefore Alphons’ cousin. In 1859, Thijm's younger sister, Antoinette, married the architect Pierre Cuypers (1827–1921), whom the family usually addressed as ‘cousin Cuypers’. These family bonds help to explain not only the strong connection that Diepenbrock felt to ‘Catholic culture’ from a young age but also the nature of his own Catholicism and its expression, throughout his life, in all that he said and did.

In 1985 Andrzej Panufnik brought Composing Myself to a rapid close in order to start work on his Ninth Symphony. The book was published in Britain in 1987 by Methuen. It was a shock to discover that a year later in Poland translated chapters from this autobiography had landed their editor in prison as the name Panufnik was still blacklisted because of martial law. Andrzej's anti-Communist chapters began to be circulated at monthly intervals in an illicitly printed periodical, Antyk. This courageous endeavour was cut short when the editor-publisher, Marciń Dybowski, was arrested as he travelled from city to city delivering samizdat copies.

After the destruction of the ghetto and the continuing oppression of the remaining Warsaw population, in our state of despair and weakening defiance, it would have seemed that nothing could shock us any further.

But then the Germans informed us, through their Polish-language press, that their army had discovered the bodies of many thousands of Polish prisoners buried side by side in Katyń Forest in Soviet Russia. These young men, the cream of the Polish intelligentsia, who had been trying to defend us against our enemies, had been interned by the Soviet Army. They had been forced to dig their own huge long trench of a grave before being shot one by one in the neck so that they fell into it. Many of the corpses also showed the marks of bestial torture.

The German finger of blame was pointed at the Russians. We were told that this appalling mass murder had taken place in 1940, over a year before the Germans had invaded Soviet Russia – a fact confirmed, they said, by documents and letters found in the uniforms of the dead Polish officers.

It was hard to know whether to believe in Russian guilt, or whether the story was a German lie to cover up their own crime. At that time we knew the Nazis as merciless mass-killers but had yet to experience directly the similar propensities in the Russians.

The Germans, in need now of more manpower, exploited the Katyń discovery as part of their sudden campaign to tempt us to work with them against the Russians. They also tried to find Poles with some German antecedents to collaborate with them in administration, or even to be sent to the Eastern front. I myself was once summoned and told by the Kommandant that I was ‘partly German’ and could have the ‘privilege’ of working for them! Fortunately it was only guesswork on their part, and I was able to talk my way out of the situation, laying heavy emphasis on my English antecedents, without giving away the fact that one great-grandmother, Henrietta Mey, came from Hannover.

The Nazis’ increasingly urgent requirement for human resources was underlined by the daily sight of German soldiers back from the front.

With the birth of my new language and the beginning of our parenthood, we stopped rushing round the world for concerts, and settled down into an even quieter life in Twickenham. While Camilla contentedly absorbed herself in caring for our baby, I was plunging into a much larger-scale composition, again built out of my three-note cell.

For some time, I had wanted to compose a work with a spiritual message, intended to unite the feelings of all people of all races and religions, attempting to bridge the tragic divisions within our disturbed and ugly world. I was searching for a concept less corruptible than the great ideal of ‘peace’, which had been so distorted and misused by the Soviets and their sycophants. To my joy, I discovered amongst the poetry of Alexander Pope, who had lived only a few hundred yards up the Thames from my home, the magnificent Universal Prayer to the ‘Father of All, by every race and every creed ador’d’, a visionary concept for anyone brought up within the confines of eighteenth-century religion, yet so close to my heart that it might have been written not 250 years ago, but especially for me today.

I took the first words, ‘Father of All’, as an invocation to be sung by the chorus throughout the cantata, imagining as I composed, a vast assembly of performers incorporating men and women of every imaginable colour, race, opinion and belief. The four soloists, I dreamt, would also be each of different race, with a multiracial chorus too. For musical instruments, however, I decided to use simply an organ and three harps.

The construction of the cantata was imposed on me by the classical form of the poem. Alexander Pope himself had written that ‘Order is Heav’n's first law’, a remark which brought me tremendous satisfaction, echoing as it did my own sentiment regarding any viable work of art.

Keeping these words in mind, I created a huge symmetrical framework, and within this structure, my three-note cell with its perpetual transpositions and reflections served me for the whole extended work.

On 2 September 1912, Alphons Diepenbrock celebrated his 50th birthday with family and friends in the Dutch town of Laren. Ten days later, on 12 September, a celebratory concert was given in his honour by the Concertgebouw Orchestra led by Willem Mengelberg, with a programme consisting entirely of works by the dedicatee of the evening: the orchestral suite of music from Marsyas, of De betooverde bron (‘Marsyas, or The Enchanted Spring’); the Vijftiende-eeuwsch bruyloftlied (‘Fifteenth-Century Wedding Song’) and Den Uil (‘The Owl’) for vocal ensemble; the Hymn for Violin and Orchestra; the Overture, Simeon's lofzang (‘Canticle of Simeon’), and the finale to Gijsbrecht van Aemstel; and finally the Hymn to Rembrandt. The performers were among the finest Dutch soloists of the day: the soprano Aaltje Noordewier-Reddingius, alto Pauline de Haan-Manifarges, tenor Jacques van Kempen and bass-baritone Gerard Zalsman. The well-known Dutch actor Willem Royaards recited Vondel's verses in the final scene of Gijsbrecht van Aemstel, and the concert-master Louis Zimmerman played the solo in the Hymn for Violin and Orchestra.

After the concert, Diepenbrock was lauded and received a ‘billfold’ containing 3,500 guilders (supplemented shortly afterwards with another 500, representing a total contemporary value of around £36,000), intended to finance the publication of some of his larger works. A supper followed and lasted until three in the morning, after which Willem Mengelberg, the actor Willem Royaards, composer Cornelis Dopper, administrator Hendrik Freijer (and their wives), as well as the author Balthazar Verhagen, cellist Gérard Hekking and Diepenbrock's youngest sister, Ludgardis, drank champagne for several more hours in the Diepenbrock family home on Johannes Verhulststraat, directly behind the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The next day the newspapers were full of enthusiastic praise and reviews.

After such a tribute, one might think that Diepenbrock had achieved success and could rest on his laurels. But nothing could be further from the truth: Diepenbrock often complained of how difficult it was to get by, as in the following letter to a critic, dated 24 September 1915:

Isolated outside Warsaw and unable to tell what was happening to the family, my mother was again prey to acute anxiety, and I was little better. We had no way of knowing whether the Russians, now just the other side of the Vistula river, would keep their promise and come to the rescue of the courageous inhabitants of Warsaw. How otherwise could they stand up to more than a few days of hand-to-hand fighting against the well-armed Germans?

Whatever the difficulties of deserting my poor mother, I was frantic to return somehow to fight a last stand against the Nazis alongside my countrymen. But the problem of getting back into Warsaw turned out to be insuperable. German patrols were energetically hunting out wounded insurgents. Anyone with a Kennkarte showing that he came from Warsaw was a dead man. Anyone without a Kennkarte was also instantly shot. False papers were unobtainable. Without knowledge of the Underground safe houses along the way, there was no hope of arriving alive in the city.

It was hard enough to stay alive where I was. The Germans conducted almost daily searches. Our good, ancient hosts set up an early-warning system to save me; indeed, they themselves were at deadly risk of being shot for harbouring me. Constant watch was kept. Whenever a patrol came near, I leapt out of a back window and clambered into the disused garden well, pulling a wooden lid over my head. Waiting for the patrol to move on, I had to balance across the deep shaft, my hands and feet struggling to keep their grip on the narrow, slimy ridges. I performed this operation dozens of times; just one slip and I would have drowned in the brackish black water deep below. I could not have shouted for help, for fear of betraying not only myself but my hosts.

Unpleasant as these episodes were, they were nothing compared with the apprehension and distress we felt as we watched huge clouds of smoke gathering every day over central Warsaw and the bright glow of burning houses at night, our ears constantly assailed by the crash and splutter of heavy artillery, the sharp counterpoint of machine guns, and the thunder of the aerial bombardment.

In the peaceful surroundings of my Dockenfield cottage, Sinfonia Sacra was making steady progress. Meanwhile I evolved an excellent system of working with Camilla. She would drive down to Dockenfield for a day and prepare a tasty lunch for us (she was already a promising cook). Then we would go for a long walk through the pine forest behind my house, after which the serious work would begin: I would take a block of my headed writing paper, scrawl my signature at various levels on the page and hand the signed blanks over to Camilla, plus any letters that needed answering. She would stay on to cook supper, eventually returning to London. Thereafter, whenever I needed a letter written I would telephone her, and she would type in whatever was required above my signature and post it off without my ever having to bother with detail.

In the summer of 1962, I stopped seeing Camilla. It was a hard decision, but after my unhappy marriage and my very recent, sad involvement I was determined to steer clear of any serious relationship. I had mentioned to her many times my intention never to marry again, and she had nodded quietly and understandingly. However, not only was my attachment to her growing apace, but she, despite her heroic attempts to avoid impinging on my independence, was bad at hiding her feelings. Her eyes spoke emotion that she would never have voiced. I decided it was unfair to allow such a young person to become remotely dependent for happiness on me, and I attempted to end our affair.

But it was too late – for both of us. We needed each other. Soon we were spending more and more time together, though we both had to be strong-willed not to allow our longing to be together to interfere with the symphony.

Time was flying very fast, and it was clear by November that I would have to accelerate my efforts on my Sinfonia Sacra. I urgently needed those magical American dollars! As the weather deteriorated, I remembered the iciness of the previous winter in my uninsulated, underheated cottage. I suddenly resolved to take off for southern Spain and work full-tilt on the symphony, to have it ready as promised by March.

To my great joy I was allowed to enrol immediately in the Faculty of Theory and Composition. I instantly gave up my percussion lessons; they had just been an excuse to get me into the Conservatoire (though the experience undoubtedly paid off later in many of my compositions). My teacher was devastated. He begged me to continue, assuring me that I could expect a highly successful career as a percussionist.

I now plunged into my music studies at top speed. The normal pattern at the Conservatoire was to study basic musical knowledge for one year, followed by three years for harmony, three more for counterpoint, then two years for composition – a timetable which I considered ridiculously staid and slow. I not only worked energetically at my piano technique every day but also attacked my other work so hard that eventually I found that I had completed the course in theory and composition in half the prescribed amount of time, despite the vast amount of written work involved. In addition, rapidly bored with the endless succession of dry academic exercises, I practised both my counterpoint and my harmony by actually composing, so that I could introduce some emotional content as well as technique.

Soon compositions seemed almost to pour too fast from my pen, including some Variations for piano and a Classical Suite for string quartet, which was played at a public concert in the Conservatoire hall by a group of advanced students led by my old schoolfriend, Stanisław Jarzębski. Fate still seemed unwilling to allow me to hear my own performances: I was stuck in bed with ‘flu, unbearably tantalised to be told by witnesses of their ‘superb rendering, received with wild applause’.

My Variations and Classical Suite, however, were still no more than student works, written as part of my classwork in harmony and counterpoint. When in the spring of 1934, aged nineteen, I composed my Trio for violin, cello and piano, exploiting my newly acquired techniques in the basic musical forms such as sonata, song and rondo, I was becoming confident enough to be much freer with my invention and musical imagination.

In the spring of 1953 I was urgently summoned to Minister Sokorski's office. His unctuous greeting alerted me to the fact that an important announcement was imminent, and that I was once again going to be used, even though my compositions were still being regarded with suspicion.

‘Citizen Panufnik, in order to deepen the friendship between Poland and China, we are sending a cultural mission to the Republic of the People's China without delay, of about 200 Polish performers, including not only the Chamber Orchestra of the Warsaw Philharmonic, but also the Mazowsze Song and Dance Company. The tour will last two months, and you, Citizen Panufnik, will lead this delegation.’

I was appalled. I insisted that I could not afford to interrupt my work as a composer, and that it was impossible for me to leave my seven-month-old baby and my wife, who was far from well. Sokorski cut me short, making it clear that I had no choice but to shoulder with pride the role cast upon me by the Ministry of Culture. ‘You cannot refuse!’ he snapped, as I continued my pleas. ‘The Party needs you!’

‘But I am not a member of the Party,’ I replied, trying to match his determination.

‘The Polish government makes it your patriotic duty to go!’ he insisted, by now quite angry. I was unable to find a quick enough answer. Sokorski carried on as though I had agreed to do as I was told.

As a musician, I was to be in charge of the artistic delegation, with another musician, Sokorski's own brother-in-law, as my second-in-command, telling me what to do. A youngish woman of Russian origin, of political rather than artistic authority, had been appointed as director of the Mazowsze Company, supported by two members of the ZMP (the Communist Youth Organisation), who were to ‘take care of the political education’ of the Mazowsze performers. We would also have with us two conductors, two choreographers (a married couple who had together helped to create the magnificent Mazowsze Ensemble), a doctor fully equipped with medical supplies and a travel specialist from the Government agency Orbis to look after timetables and arrangements.

The ancient university city of Kraków had been the Polish capital until the seventeenth century. Miraculously, the war had left it unscathed. Though strategically less significant than Warsaw, it probably also owed its survival to the fact that, in the nineteenth century, it had belonged to the Austro- Hungarian empire. Perhaps the Nazi commanders felt protective towards it on that account. Whatever the reason for its survival, it now became the Mecca for anyone who wished to be involved in the rebirth of cultural life, while Warsaw remained the seat of the puppet government of Polish Communists (most of whom had spent the war in Russia).

To arrive in Kraków was like returning from Hades. Seeing streets whole, with undamaged houses on each side, I felt a surge of optimism. Within minutes, I met old friends: suddenly I was hailed from across a street by Antoni Bohdziewicz, a brilliant radio-drama producer for whom I had written incidental music before the war, and Stanisław Wohl, now in army uniform.

Major Wohl clapped his hand on my shoulder, and with a broad grin said, ‘You’re under arrest!’

‘Thank God you’re still alive – you’re just the person we need!’ he continued. ‘We’re attached to the Polish Army Film Unit, and, from this minute, you have begun your new appointment as our Music Director. We must have a composer! Now! Yesterday!’ I became his grateful captive.

In no time, Stanisław Wohl had arranged for me to receive a month's pay in advance so that I could stop selling my last shirts and socks in exchange for food. While I searched for accommodation for the family, he found me a temporary room in a large house belonging to the Film Unit. It was already occupied by some of Poland's leading actors and writers, including Czesław Miłosz, then still quite unknown, and Jerzy Andrzejewski, about to try to film his Ashes and Diamonds.

Kraków appeared entrancingly beautiful that spring; the budding trees symbolised hope for a new Polish summer. I would stroll for hours admiring the mellow, ancient Palace of Wawel nearby and the glorious buildings of the University, founded in the thirteenth century, only 100 years later than Oxford.

Realising that I could no longer leave my financial survival to fate, and persuaded by my good friend, John Denison, of the Arts Council, I allowed my name to be put forward for the post of Music Director and Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO). After an enjoyable and very well received trial concert I was offered the job. It was a daunting prospect: fifty concerts a year, a huge number of rehearsals, much travelling around the countryside for out-of-town performances, heavy administrative duties, including the engagement of soloists and orchestral players, and social appearances as well. To take on this catalogue of responsibilities I would again have to say goodbye to my manuscript paper. A London orchestra would have been less demanding and the London Symphony Orchestra had indeed made tentative enquiries, but this was too remote a prospect. If I could not soon show myself solvent, I might fail to qualify for British naturalisation.

My eventual acceptance of the Birmingham offer resolved my pecuniary problems, but was the death knell for my marriage. Scarlett, after her glamorous life in London, was repelled by the idea of living in what she described as a ‘dull provincial Midland city’. She refused to come to Birmingham with me, even for a single concert. Grateful as I was for Scarlett's courageous participation in my escape, she had contributed to many of the problems that were keeping me away from composition and had never outgrown her hunger for admiring words and constant attention. Her desire for my success did not arise from any belief in what I was trying to do, but because it would provide the social position she felt she needed to shine at her brightest. If she was an unsuitable sort of wife for a tunnel-visioned, dedicated composer, I was equally the most ill-fitted sort of husband to assist her in her social ambitions. Even if I would be lonely, it would be a major relief to escape from our endless quarrels.

The management of the CBSO wanted me to sign a contract for three years, but I explained to them how little I had been able to compose since I had come to Britain, and they most mercifully agreed to two years with an option to renew.

I almost failed to reach Berlin in time. Arriving punctually to catch the night train, laden down with bulky scores and orchestral material for my unconventional programme, as well as a hefty suitcase containing my conductor's ‘uniform’, I waited three hours, the only passenger on a deserted platform, shivering in a temperature several degrees below zero. When the Moscow-Berlin train finally lumbered in, I jumped towards a carriage door with my luggage, but the handle would not budge. I tried several more doors but they were all locked. I ran after the guard, seeing that he was about to blow the whistle for departure. Breathing vodka fumes all over me, he barked that the train was full. Furious, I grabbed his arm just in time to prevent him waving his green flag, and thrust under his nose my ticket and sleeper reservation issued by the Ministry of Culture, ordering him, with what I hoped was the voice of authority, to show me to my place. Suddenly alarmed, he muttered that my booking was indeed valid, and let me into my compartment, where a Soviet army officer was already tucking himself into the lower bunk.

My problems were not over. Longing to warm my frozen limbs under the blankets, I found that my mattress was bare; there was not so much as a pillow or sheet. The Russian officer sent me to the attendant, a tiny Mongolian girl, who was sleeping on an upright seat, her head against the corridor wall. She woke up fast enough at my approach and insisted on payment for the bedclothes in German marks (presumably for black-market use), of which I had none. My Russian companion not only saved me from being frozen all night, but was so friendly that he refused repayment. So I could hardly complain when he consumed a stinking garlic sausage which later would not allow itself to be forgotten. Like most of our fellow passengers, he was en route to Berlin on an army posting. Never having been abroad before, he was envious of my wider travels to the rest of Europe. He had a lot to say about his life, his wife and his vodka. Sleep was impossible. His night-long conversation was interspersed at regular intervals by the sounds and fumes provoked by the battle between the garlic sausage and his digestive system.

In June 1928, De Nieuwe Gids published an article on Diepenbrock by his wife Elisabeth, written in response to two 1926 surveys by J. C. Hol and Willem Pijper. Five years after Diepenbrock's death, both Pijper and Hol made more in-depth analyses of both his character and his work, at the same time also attempting to fathom the man behind the composer. Pijper regarded Diepenbrock as a prism with three faces: the philologist, the musician and the Catholic. Hol essentially took the same approach, but also felt that a personal and psychological analysis of Diepenbrock was necessary. In his view, Diepenbrock was seriously held back by his work teaching classics – even though teaching, being his main source of income, did not ‘occupy the same position’ in his life as music or Catholicism. ‘Both of the latter were primary, philology was secondary’, in Hol's opinion; ‘Philology is not an innate quality in and of itself. It is a profession’. Thus it was all the more regrettable, Hol contested, that Diepenbrock's special qualities as a philologist and classicist stood in the way of his ability and willingness to accept a position in music, his true calling.

Elisabeth Diepenbrock pointed out the futility of viewing her husband as a ‘composite’, saying that ‘the fundamental unity within any conception of life should remain intact’. For it is precisely the interplay between these elements – the Catholic, the classicist and the musician – that made Diepenbrock who he was. She even took this notion further, since she believed it was his life (all the facets of his life, both the positive and the negative) that led jointly and inextricably to the creation of his art. The lack of a formal musical education, for example, was precisely what led him to write the music that he wrote, and was the reason why he ‘scraped and sighed’ as he did. A survey of Diepenbrock's correspondence suggests that his music was born from a kind of spontaneous inspiration, which then needed to be conquered through toil and persistence, before arriving at a score that represented the sound he had envisaged.

As with every other composer, Diepenbrock's music is also a reflection of his psyche, of his education and of the time in which he lived. His career as a composer is marked by various major developments.